But there was another side to this mystery that the song does not get into. My friend told me that what amazed the tribal spiritual experts was that while the Christians were blissfully unaware of the spirits, the spirits were very much aware of the Christians, and not at all happy about their coming. The tribal spiritual experts marveled that Christians were simultaneously ignorant of the spirits, but very spiritually powerful. The spiritual power of the Christians so impressed the tribal spiritual leaders that they were often the first to convert to Christianity.

God is the all powerful creator spirit and Christianity is the religion that he founded. So Christians are protected to a large degree from the spiritual world. The Christians missionaries were like people wearing raincoats that were so good that they were not aware of the rain.

My friend also told me that the Chinese used to use the Christians to clear haunted houses. When the Christian missionaries came to town the Chinese quickly offered them a house where they could stay, of course the house was haunted by evil spirits. The missionaries would move in, pray, sing, and when they left the evil spirits were long gone. The Chinese would then reoccupy the house.

I should make it clear that my faith healing friend was not commenting on the movie Pocahontas when she told me these stories. It just struck me that the song, "Colors of the Wind," was telling half the story.

I was recently watching an interview of a Catholic exorcist who was advising the film makers of the recent movie, "The Rite." He said that Christianity and atheism do not protect people against the spirits. He is an expert and I suppose he is right that neither atheism nor Christianity provide complete protection but at the same time I believe that Christianity and perhaps other religions, particularly Abrahamic religions provide some protection.

Furthermore, the evil spirits trying to lead atheists to "our father who art below" as C.S.Lewis called the Devil in the Screwtape letters, would carefully avoid obvious manifestations. Atheists are frequently fairly logical people and might run not walk to a church if they ever became to convinced that spirits are real. So Atheists may have a degree of protection against the spirit world, or at least its more obvious manifestations. This might be particularly true where Christianity is present. Evil spirits are likely to lay low when the path to the good spirit is so clearly marked.

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